Why Information Security is important to a company?

Information security is important to a company in a variety of ways. There are informational, legal , protection and operational reasons. Information systems are attacked in a variety of ways, some being malicious with intent and others being completely random and accidental. Information security situations can lead to loss of data, unauthorized use of equipment, to slowing down the systems and slowing down the company. This also involves loosing time which equates to loosing money. This type of situation will cause you to pay 10 times more money to get the systems back working and retrieving the data as it will to secure the systems in the first place. Just think about your company and networked systems as a bank and Information Security being the vault, guard and police protecting your assets.

Attacks by Virus’s can cause massive problems but specifically in terms of Informational purposes. They can attack word processors, Emails, Microsoft Outlook, databases and cause all kinds of problems. You entire data on clients and client list can ultimately be wiped out and inaccessible. There was a Virus in 1999 called Melissa that caused massive damage in the world and caused some companies to shut down their operations ending with the author going to prison (Rosencrance, 2002). Legally the main reason why there is need to keep your information safe is because of HIPPA regulations (Services, 2011). Patient information is not to be shared by any non authorized persons and the threat of this information getting stolen is high without a protected system. Your Nurses will have to use their personal laptops and then input patient information into the company computer. A breach in this security can lead to trust issues and maybe a closing of the business for privacy reasons.

Systems need to be protected from the hardware to the software and everything in between. Malicious attackers are out there along with accidental and environmental risks. It has been reported that at large companies, Downtime of information systems, can cost $5000 a minute and the average cost of $500,000 lasting 90 minutes. Even if a company is not at that level yet, it will increase in the next 5 years and starting out with a complete secure system will keep the wheels turning and the system operating. From the employees doing their job and taking care of daily business to the computers and it’s systems operating properly.